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Step Back: Lessons for U.S. Foreign Policy from the Failed War on Terror

In the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the
United States launched an international war on terrorism defined by
military intervention, nation building, and efforts to reshape the
politics of the Middle East. As of 2017, however, it has become
clear that the American strategy has destabilized the Middle East
while doing little to protect the United States from terrorism.

After 15 years of considerable strategic consistency during the
presidencies of George Bush and Barack Obama, Donald Trump now
takes the reins having promised to “bomb the sh—”
out of ISIS and “defeat them fast.” At the same time,
however, Trump broke sharply in his campaign rhetoric from
Republican orthodoxy on Iraq and Afghanistan. Whatever President
Trump decides to do, an evaluation of the War on Terror should
inform his policies.

We argue that the War on Terror failed. This failure has two
fundamental—and related—sources. The first is the
inflated assessment of the terror threat facing the United States,
which led to an expansive counterterrorism campaign that did not
protect Americans from terrorist attacks. The second source of
failure is the adoption of an aggressive strategy of military
intervention.

The lessons from the War on Terror indicate that it is time for
the United States to take a different approach. Policymakers need
to acknowledge that although terrorism is a serious concern, it
represents only a modest security threat to the American homeland.
Further, the United States should abandon the use of military
intervention and nation building in the War on Terror. Instead, the
United States should push regional partners to confront terrorist
groups abroad, while the U.S. returns to an emphasis on the
intelligence and law enforcement paradigm for combating the threat
against the American homeland.

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Introduction

In the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the
United States launched an international war on terrorism defined by
military intervention, nation building, and efforts to reshape the
politics of the Middle East. As of 2017, however, it has become
clear that the American strategy has not delivered the intended
results.

After 15 years of considerable strategic consistency during the
presidencies of George Bush and Barack Obama, Donald Trump now
takes the reins, having made a more aggressive approach to ISIS a
central plank first of his campaign and, potentially, of his
presidency. Noting that America faces a “far greater threat than
the people of our country understand,” he has vowed to “bomb the
sh— out of ISIS”1
and promised to defeat “Radical Islamic Terrorism, just as we have
defeated every threat we have faced in every age
before.”2

At the same time, however, Trump has also broken sharply from
Republican orthodoxy on Iraq and Afghanistan. He refers to “our
current strategy of nation-building” as a “proven failure.”
Additionally, he has downplayed the role of democracy promotion,
suggesting, for example, that the Obama administration “should
never have attempted to build a democracy in Libya.”3

Whatever President Trump decides to do, a dispassionate
evaluation of the War on Terror to date should inform his
policies.

In this policy analysis, we argue that the War on Terror has
been a failure. This failure has two fundamental — and
related — sources. The first is the inflated assessment of
the terrorist threat facing the United States, which led to an
expansive counterterrorism campaign focused on a series of actions
that have very little to do with protecting Americans from
terrorist attacks. The second source of failure is the adoption of
an aggressive strategy of military intervention. This is due in
large part to the faulty assessment of the terrorism challenge. But
it also stems from the widespread belief among Washington, D.C.,
elites in the indispensable nature of American power and the
utility of military force in international politics. Together,
these factors have produced an American strategy that is both
ineffective and counterproductive.

The inescapable conclusion of our analysis is that the
staggering costs of the War on Terror have far outweighed the
benefits. A recent study by Neta Crawford at Brown University puts
the cost of the War on Terror (both money spent to date and
required for future veterans’ benefits) at roughly $5
trillion — a truly astonishing number.4 Even if one believes American
efforts have made the nation marginally safer, the United States
could have achieved far greater improvements in safety and security
at far less cost through other means. It is not hyperbole to say
that the United States could have spent its money on almost any
federal program aimed at saving lives and produced a vastly greater
return on investment.5

A careful reading of the lessons from the past 15 years
indicates that the United States should abandon the existing
strategy in the Middle East for three reasons. First, military
intervention and nation building efforts, even at current “light
footprint” levels, cause more problems than they solve, including
spawning more anti-American sentiment and creating, rather than
diminishing, the conditions that lead to terrorism.6 Second, in contrast to the dire
picture painted by many observers, including President Trump, the
terrorism threat is too small to justify either the existing
strategy or more military intervention. Finally, given the first
two arguments, the costs of a forward-deployed strategy to fight
terrorism are simply too high.7

Our analysis proceeds in four parts. In the first section we
review the main objectives of the War on Terror and the key
components of U.S. strategy designed to achieve them.8 In section two we document the
failure of U.S. policies to achieve the goals articulated by both
Presidents Bush and Obama. In section three we explain why War on
Terror policies may have yielded the results they did, producing a
set of important lessons learned to inform future policy. We
conclude by arguing that the United States should ramp down its War
on Terror, and we outline the principles of a “step back” strategy
regarding ISIS and Islamist-inspired terrorism.

U.S. Objectives and Strategy in the War on Terror

In the 2003 National Strategy to Combat Terrorism, the Bush
administration declared its central objectives in the War on
Terror: “The intent of our national strategy is to stop terrorist
attacks against the United States, its citizens, its interests, and
our friends and allies around the world and ultimately, to create
an international environment inhospitable to terrorists and all
those who support them.”9

As many observers have noted, 9/11 prompted the Bush
administration to radically overhaul the American approach to
confronting terrorism. Prior to the attacks of 9/11, the U.S.
government viewed domestic terrorism as a matter for law
enforcement and international terrorism as a distant threat.
Accordingly, American foreign policy focused very little on the
issue of terrorism. When the United States did occasionally conduct
foreign policy to retaliate for terrorism, such as the attacks on
the Berlin disco or the U.S. embassies in Africa, the means were
quite limited, as with the 1986 bombing of Libyan
command-and-control sites or the 1998 cruise missile strikes in
Afghanistan and Sudan. After the attacks of 9/11, terrorism took
center stage in national security policy and the limited-response
approach gave way to a far more aggressive and expansive strategy
that the Bush administration in 2003 called the “4-D”
strategy.10

The 4-D strategy to prevent terrorist attacks on the United
States comprised four primary missions: to defeat terrorist
organizations with global reach, to deny such organizations
sanctuaries from which to operate and launch attacks, to diminish
the conditions that give rise to the use of terrorism, and to
defend the United States through “proactive” defense of the
homeland.

The logic of the Bush strategy was straightforward. In order to
prevent attacks against the United States in the short term, al
Qaeda and similar terrorist organizations had to be disrupted and
their capabilities degraded. In the medium term, aggressive action
against terrorist groups would help deter other groups from
attacking and make potential state sponsors of terrorism think
twice. In the longer term, security would best be achieved by
eradicating the underlying conditions that the Bush administration
(and later the Obama administration) believed had given rise to
terrorism in the first place. Among these conditions were ethnic
and religious conflict, corruption, poverty and lack of economic
opportunity, and social and political oppression.11

Military Intervention

Since 2001 the most important component of the international War
on Terror has been direct military intervention. This decision to
confront terrorism with military force, rather than through the
more traditional law enforcement framework, has significantly
shaped the War on Terror and helped determine its outcomes.

At this point it is useful to be clear about terminology. The
Department of Defense defines military intervention as “The
deliberate act of a nation or a group of nations to introduce its
military forces into the course of an existing
controversy.”12 We
further differentiate between direct and indirect military
intervention. Direct military intervention involves sending
American troops to fight, occupy, or defend territory in other
nations or conducting air strikes (whether via drones or manned
airplanes) or missile strikes. Examples of direct military
intervention include the invasion and subsequent occupation of
Afghanistan and Iraq, the far-flung American drone campaign, U.S.
military support for Iraq in its efforts to retake territory from
the Islamic State, and U.S. Special Forces supporting local
counterterrorism efforts in Tunisia, Somalia, Mali, and
Nigeria.

Indirect military intervention, on the other hand, involves
providing various kinds of support (intelligence, military
equipment, advising, money, and training) to facilitate the use of
military force by a third party. The effort to arm and train Syrian
rebel groups to fight the Islamic State is one example of indirect
military intervention. U.S. intelligence, arms sales, and
logistical support for the Saudi intervention in Yemen is
another.

Both forms of military intervention, in turn, are distinct from
the wide variety of nonmilitary tools available to the United
States. Those tools can be noninterventionist, as in the case of
economic sanctions, diplomacy and negotiations, and freezing
terrorist groups’ financial assets. Others, however, such as
nation building and democracy promotion, are certainly forms of
intervention in the sense that they either require American
military involvement (such as in Afghanistan and Iraq) or they
feature a steady dose of American political pressure and financial
assistance aimed at shaping outcomes in another nation.

Although it has taken several forms, the central purposes of
American military intervention — direct and indirect —
have remained consistent since 2001. First and most simply, of
course, the goal of military intervention has been to kill
terrorists, destroy their organizations, and eliminate their
ability to conduct terrorist operations. A critical foundation of
this strategy was the belief that the United States could no longer
wait until the threat was fully formed. Instead, the United States
needed to begin preemptively striking with military force.
Beginning with the 2002 National Security Strategy, the Bush
administration put forth a doctrine of preventive action against
terror threats, even if those threats were not yet
imminent.13 As Bob
Woodward reported, “Many in the Bush administration felt President
Clinton’s prior responses to terror attacks had been weak and
inadvertently emboldened terrorists. There would, therefore, be no
Clintonian ‘reflexive pullback’ this
time.”14 Instead, the
Bush administration set the United States on an offensive path,
seeking to destroy and defeat terror groups overseas so, as
President Bush said, “we do not have to face them in the United
States.”15

Second, U.S. officials have viewed the use of military force as
a deterrent against future terrorism. Beyond the effort to destroy
al Qaeda, the invasion of Afghanistan also served as punishment for
the Taliban for harboring the terrorist group and a warning to
other state sponsors of terrorism. Similarly, despite the fact that
Iraq was not an al Qaeda sponsor, the Bush administration clearly
viewed the invasion of Iraq as an important opportunity to show
resolve in the “central front in the war on terror.”16

Third, officials have viewed military intervention as a critical
tool to prop up weak governments and to prevent terrorist groups
from taking territory and staking out safe harbors in weak states.
The United States and its European allies have sought to help the
newly formed National Unity Government in Libya by conducting air
strikes against ISIS, for example. And in Yemen, the United States
has conducted drone strikes against al Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula since 2010 but more recently has provided military and
intelligence assistance to Saudi Arabia as it intervenes in support
of the embattled Yemeni government.17

It is important to note that the election of Barack Obama
provoked little change at the strategic level. In addition to the
continued fight against the Taliban and other jihadist groups in
Afghanistan and the major efforts against ISIS in Syria and Iraq,
the United States under Obama conducted drone strikes, air strikes,
and Special Forces operations in Pakistan, Syria, Libya, Somalia,
and Yemen.18 It is true
that Obama pulled U.S. troops out of Iraq, a move that would later
be criticized for spurring the rise of ISIS. But this was not
inconsistent with the Bush approach. In the Status of Forces
agreement that he signed with Iraq in 2008, Bush committed to
withdraw all U.S. troops by 2011.

Remaking the Middle East

The United States has also invested heavily in efforts to remake
and reshape the Middle East in pursuit of longer-run and more
fundamental solutions to the root causes of terrorism. Both the
Bush and Obama administrations argued that terrorism springs from
unhealthy political and economic systems and that terrorist groups
will flourish where states are too weak to exert effective control
over their own territory.19 The result has been a long-term
campaign that started with regime change to depose supporters of
terrorism, evolved into democracy promotion and nation building to
encourage the development of future allies and well-behaved
nations, and finally has left the United States with the challenge
of propping up weak and unstable governments.

Buoyed by perceived early success in promoting democracy in
Afghanistan, President Bush frequently articulated his conviction
that America had a responsibility to liberate people.20 In 2003 President Bush announced
what he called a “forward strategy for freedom in the Middle East.”
After the first elections in Afghanistan and Iraq, President Bush
intensified his calls for democracy in the Middle East, promoting
it as a cornerstone of the War on Terror.21 Bush believed democracy could
provide the transformation necessary to diminish the underlying
conditions of terrorism and solve the problem of Islamic
extremism.22 National
strategy documents promulgated by both the Bush and Obama
administrations have identified the promotion of democracy as the
long-term solution in the fight against terror and the best way to
achieve enduring security for America.23

Beyond regime change and democratization, the United States has
also used nation building as a key tool for remaking the region.
After disbanding them in 2003, for example, the United States
helped rebuild and retrain the Iraqi security forces, although
clearly with mixed results.24 Thanks to U.S. efforts, the Afghan
security forces now number 350,000.25 As of late 2015, the United States
has spent approximately $90 billion training and equipping the
Afghan and Iraqi armies and police.26 The United States also has spent
$104 billion to help Afghanistan rebuild since 2001 and $60 billion
dollars to rebuild Iraq since 2003.27 To handle much of the
implementation for these policies, the government established
provincial reconstruction teams comprised of military and civilians
from the Department of State, the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID), and the Department of
Agriculture. Those teams infused money and expertise into both
countries, with projects ranging in scale from single, manually
operated water pumps to hydroelectric dams. Additionally, the teams
conducted training for Afghan and Iraqi government officials.

Mission Not Accomplished: Assessing the War on Terror

By any measure, the war on terrorism has been far-reaching. But
despite the scale of this campaign the question remains: What does
the United States have to show for all this effort?

Measuring the effectiveness of the War on Terror is a tricky
business; citizens and experts alike can reasonably argue about the
most important determinants of success and failure. Assessments may
vary based on the level of analysis being conducted and which
outcomes are emphasized (e.g., lives lost, terrorists killed, the
destruction of specific terrorist groups, etc.). Regardless of the
definition used, however, every assessment should answer the
critical question of whether the United States has reduced the
terror threat since 9/11. Any assessment should also address
whether or not the government has met the goals it set for itself
and has pursued consistently for the past 15 years.28

Even by a conservative accounting, the War on Terror has been a
failure. First, although the United States has not suffered another
major terrorist attack since 9/11, there is no proof that
intervention abroad had anything to do with that, despite killing
thousands of terrorist group members. Nor has the War on Terror
made Americans appreciably safer (nor made them feel safer) than
they were before 9/11, in part because Americans were already
exceptionally safe and in part because, again, offensive
counterterrorism efforts have had little or no connection to the
rate of terrorism in the U.S. homeland.29 In fact, the most likely case is
that foreign intervention has made Americans somewhat less safe.
Second, the United States has not destroyed or defeated al Qaeda,
the Islamic State, or any other terror groups of global reach,
regardless of how well or poorly the description applies to groups
comprised of a few hundred or a few thousand people. Nor, finally,
has the United States made a dent in diminishing the underlying
conditions supposed to give rise to terrorism. Instead, more
Americans have died from terror attacks and there have been more
Islamist-inspired attacks within the homeland since 9/11 compared
to the same period before, while the number of Islamist-inspired
terror groups has proliferated since the War on Terror began.
Moreover, the number of terror attacks worldwide has skyrocketed,
indicating that the conditions driving the use of terrorism are
very likely worse than ever.

Figure 1: Islamist versus Non-Islamist Terror Events in
the United StatesSource: Global Terrorism Database at
the University of Maryland.

In the next several sections we present more detailed discussion
of American progress toward each of these key objectives.

Objective #1: Preventing Terrorist Attacks in the United
States

The United States has fortunately not suffered a second major
attack on its soil since September 11, 2001. Historically speaking,
a major attack is an outlier. Outside of 9/11, terrorists have
killed very few Americans in the homeland. Between 1986 and 2001
there were four Islamist-inspired terrorist attacks in the United
States, which killed 10 Americans.30 Since the 9/11 attacks there have
been eight attacks, killing 88.31As Figure 1 shows, the level of
Islamist-inspired attacks has never come close to the rates of
non-Islamist terrorism in the United States in the mid 1970s.

These data reflect a modest increase with respect to the rate
and lethality of Islamist-inspired terrorism since 9/11. But
post-9/11 Islamist-inspired terrorism also remains almost invisible
when viewed in relation to the more than 230,000 people murdered by
fellow Americans during the same period.32 Islamist-inspired terrorists took
the lives of less than one-tenth of 1 percent of American murder
victims over the last 15 years.33 Americans who are not terrorists
carry out nearly all murders in America.

What is unclear from the figures alone, however, is what role
the international War on Terror has played in shaping that
trend.

Broadly speaking, the data are consistent with three possible
interpretations. The first is that the War on Terror has had little
or no effect on Islamist-inspired terrorism against Americans. The
second possibility is that the numbers would look far worse in the
absence of the War on Terror. The third possibility is that the War
on Terror has, in fact, set the conditions for the slight uptick in
anti-American terrorism observed since 9/11.

The “no effect” possibility comes in two versions. The first is
that the 9/11 attacks, although spectacular, did not provide al
Qaeda (or any other group) with sufficient strategic justification
to repeat them or to work very hard to conduct other, smaller
attacks against the United States.34 To date, for example, there is no
evidence that any group has plotted or attempted another attack
against the U.S. homeland on the scale of 9/11. Although the
attacks certainly helped establish the al Qaeda “brand” globally,
the attacks failed to convince the United States to leave the
Middle East as al Qaeda had hoped.35 Given this, it may be that al
Qaeda concluded its resources would produce a better return if
applied elsewhere. Meanwhile, regional al Qaeda affiliates are even
more devoted to local and regional priorities, as is the Islamic
State, which has its hands full fighting on multiple fronts to
seize and defend territory in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere.

The second possibility is that improved homeland defense, as
opposed to international action, has helped prevent additional
attacks. The United States responded to the 9/11 attacks by
investing heavily in homeland security, upgrading airline security,
hardening ports of entry and major government buildings, and
improving intelligence and law enforcement
coordination.36
Proponents of this argument also point to as many as 93 plots
against the United States that have been foiled by American
intelligence and homeland security efforts.37 Whereas al Qaeda had the element
of surprise working for them in a significant way in 2001, the same
was no longer true afterwards.

But even here one has to question whether the United States has
been lucky, as opposed to good. Many scholars have offered sharp
criticisms of the American homeland security project, suggesting
that, despite some improvements, the United States remains
essentially as vulnerable as before to terrorists.38 And no matter how many critical
nodes the United States attempts to protect, there are a nearly
infinite number of potential ways to inflict significant numbers of
casualties in such a large and open society. As former Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director George Tenet wondered in his
autobiography, “it would be easy for al-Qaeda or another terrorist
group to send suicide bombers to cause chaos in a half-dozen
American shopping malls on any given day. Why haven’t
they?”39

In their exhaustive investigation into post-9/11 terrorist
plots, John Mueller and Mark Stewart point out that, despite the
fact that 173 million foreigners enter the United States legally
each year, al Qaeda has conducted exactly zero successful attacks
since 9/11. To those who might argue that the United States has, in
fact, disrupted many undisclosed plots, Mueller and Stewart argue:
“if undisclosed plotters have been so able and so determined to
commit violence, and if there are so many of them, why have they
committed so little of it before being waylaid? And why were there
so few plots in the months and years following 9/11, before
enhanced security measures could be effectively
deployed?”40 Mueller and
Stewart also cite former CIA analyst and terrorism expert Marc
Sageman, who told them, “As a member of the intelligence community,
who kept abreast of all the plots in the U.S., I have not seen any
significant terrorist plots that have been disrupted and not
disclosed. On the contrary, the government goes out of its way to
take credit for non-plots, such as their sting
operations.”41

Contrary to concerns that al Qaeda and ISIS remain a major
threat to the United States, historically major terrorist attacks
outside of a war zone are quite rare. Before and since 9/11, the
most catastrophic terror attacks have occurred almost exclusively
in failing states or states at war. Prior to September 11, 2001,
the most catastrophic global terror attack caused just over a third
of the fatalities of 9/11. That attack occurred in Rwanda during
the genocide of 1994, when 1,180 Tutsis seeking refuge in a church
were targeted.42 The
next most severe terror attack was only a sixth of the size, and it
occurred in Iran during the Islamic revolution in
1979.43 Since 9/11, the
most catastrophic attacks, ranging from 400 to 1,700 fatalities,
have occurred in Iraq, Syria, Nepal, and the Democratic Republic of
the Congo.44

The second interpretation of the data, touted by both the Bush
and Obama administrations, is that the international war on
terrorism — not simply improved homeland security efforts
— has prevented acts of terrorism on U.S. soil. The argument
here was twofold. First, by killing terrorists and disrupting or
destroying their organizations, the United States made it
impossible for those groups to strike the United States. Second, by
demonstrating American resolve, the War on Terror served as a
deterrent since terrorist groups realized the futility of
conducting attacks against the United States.

History has revealed serious gaps in the strategic logic of the
War on Terror. First, despite unprecedented counterterrorism
efforts across the Middle East and Northern Africa, the United
States has clearly not managed to eliminate the terrorists or
destroy their organizations. The initial military action in
Afghanistan severely disrupted al Qaeda’s ability to operate
there, but as the War on Terror expanded to Iraq and beyond, the
limits of conventional warfare for counterterrorism became evident.
Militaries are very good at destroying large groups of buildings
and people and for taking and holding territory, but they are not
designed to eradicate groups of loosely connected individuals who
may, at any moment, melt into the civilian population. Even with
drones and Special Forces, the ability of the United States to
dismantle al Qaeda and its affiliates has proven quite limited.
Moreover, the chaos sown by the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan
inadvertently helped spawn the birth and rapid growth of new
jihadist groups, including the Islamic State.

Second, the argument that U.S. international efforts have had a
strong deterrent effect is highly suspect. It is difficult to
imagine the United States having provided a more powerful statement
of resolve than the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, complemented
by a steady stream of drone strikes across at least seven different
nations. The lesson to future terrorists should have been quite
clear: if you attack the United States there will be nowhere to
hide; the American military will kill you and, potentially, topple
your country’s political regime. Nonetheless, in the wake of
the concerted U.S. campaign, the jihadists appear undaunted, with
the Islamic state emerging thanks in part to the chaos in Iraq.
Today, the Islamic State’s rhetoric and actions align to make
clear that the American (and allied) military presence is a far
more powerful recruitment tool than it is a deterrent. During the
2015 attacks in Paris, for example, one of the attackers was heard
blaming French President Hollande for intervening in
Syria.45

Finally, the third possible interpretation of the data is that
the War on Terror inadvertently fueled more anti-American
terrorism. The argument here is that, had the United States
conducted a limited intervention to disrupt al Qaeda, withdrawn
quickly from Afghanistan, and not invaded Iraq, many, if not most,
of the post-9/11 attacks would not have taken place. Without an
ongoing American presence and an active military campaign helping
to further radicalize and motivate potential jihadists, observers
point out, it is reasonable to expect that there would have been
far less incentive for al Qaeda and related groups to attack the
United States. Further, had the United States not invaded Iraq, it
is doubtful that ISIS would even exist.46

Table 1: Number of Islamist-inspired Terror Groups and
FightersSource: Department of State Country
Reports on Terrorism 2000 through 2015, Stanford University’s
Mapping Militant Organizations Project.

This is not to argue that al Qaeda and ISIS would not still have
some desire to strike at American targets even if the United States
were not active in the Middle East, but as noted above, it is clear
that the Islamic State, at least, is using the American presence in
the Middle East as a justification for anti-American terrorism. If
nothing else, continued American military action in the Middle East
ensures that ISIS will remain highly visible in the news and in the
minds of Americans, providing potential lone wolves in the United
States inspiration to carry out future attacks.

Although the level of terrorism aimed at Americans has increased
only slightly since 2001, the number of Islamist-inspired terrorist
groups and terror attacks in the Middle East and elsewhere has
skyrocketed.47 Analysts
might rightly question how global the reach of some of these new
organizations truly is, but the government’s rhetoric over
time suggests that we should include any terrorist group capable of
launching or even inspiring attacks outside their own home nation.
By this measure, the United States has failed to achieve its stated
objective. Although American military intervention in Afghanistan
and Pakistan effectively put the central al Qaeda organization out
of business for some time, al Qaeda affiliates have proliferated
around the world, one of which — al Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula — is routinely identified as the most dangerous
group operating today.48
Most troubling on this score, as noted, is that the war in Iraq
inadvertently helped pave the way for the emergence of the Islamic
State.

The growth of the jihadist terrorist enterprise since 2001 has
been stunning. When the War on Terror began, there were roughly
32,200 fighters comprising 13 Islamist-inspired terror
organizations. By 2015, as Table 1 shows, the estimate had
ballooned to more than 100,000 fighters spread across 44
Islamist-inspired terror groups.49

This growth has led to an even more explosive rise in violence
— most of which has occurred in the Middle East and Africa.
As Figure 2 indicates, there were 1,880 terror attacks worldwide in
2001 when the U.S. began its War on Terror. In 2015 the number was
14,806. Fatalities caused by terror attacks have also increased. As
the below figure indicates, fatalities worldwide have risen to
unprecedented levels. In 2015, 38,422 people were killed by
terrorism — a staggering 397 percent increase from 2001.

These figures strongly suggest that the War on Terror has not
only failed to defeat al Qaeda and other major terrorist groups,
but has also failed to contain the growth of Islamist-inspired
terrorism more generally. The argument that things might have been
worse in the absence of such an aggressive American effort rings
hollow, especially given the manner in which the war in Iraq
produced the chaos that gave ISIS room to operate and provided
additional motivation and justification for anti-Western attacks.
Further, a closer analysis of the chronology of the War on Terror
provides support for the conclusion that the United States has made
things worse rather than better. As Figure 3 shows, terror attacks
rarely occurred before 9/11 in the seven countries in which the
U.S. executed military operations as part of its War on Terror.

Figure 2: Worldwide Terror — Attacks and
FatalitiesSource: Global Terrorism Database at
the University of Maryland.

To investigate the impact of U.S. military intervention, we
compared the terror rates between War on Terror states, other
Muslim majority countries, the United States, and the global
average. Additionally, we created regression models to examine the
significance, if any, of U.S. military strikes when controlling for
other variables often used in the study of terrorism such as a
state’s GDP per capita, economic growth rate, social
fractionalization, polity, and education levels (see Appendix
1).

As Table 2 reveals, the number of terror attacks rose an
astonishing 1,900 percent in the seven countries that the United
States either invaded or conducted air strikes in, while other
Muslim majority states saw a much more modest 42 percent increase.
The regression models also found that countries where the United
States conducted air or drone strikes saw a dramatic increase in
terror attacks compared to countries where the United States did
not conduct strikes.50
Even more startling, the models showed the greatest effect when
comparing drone strikes conducted in year one with the number of
terror attacks carried out two years later, a finding consistent
with the theory that U.S. strikes have a catalyzing effect on
terror groups. In short, contrary to the intentions of the U.S.
government, as the War on Terror has expanded, it has led to
greater levels of terrorism.

Figure 3:Terror Attacks Where the U.S. Fought the War on
Terror, 1987-2015Source: Global Terrorism Database at
the University of Maryland

Table 2: Terrorism Before and During the War on Terror:
Average Number of Terror Attacks per Country, per YearNotes:
“Before 9/11” captures all terror attacks from 1987-2000 (14
years).
“After 9/11” captures all terror attacks from 2002-2015 (14
years).

“Muslim Majority” includes all Muslim majority states except the
seven War on Terror states. The list comes from the University of
Michigan’s Center for the Education of Women
http://www.cew.umich.edu/muslim_majority. The list includes four
entries that are not in the Global Terrorism Database. Three are
not countries (Mayotte, Palestine, and the Turkish Republic of
Northern Cyprus) and one is not in the database (Oman); no
explanation could be found for Oman’s exclusion.

“Global average” includes all states listed in the Global
Terrorism Database, except for the seven War on Terror states
— 199 total.

Neither the Bush nor the Obama administration imagined the War
on Terror would be won quickly. Both acknowledged that changing the
underlying context of instability and political conflict in the
Middle East would take time. Unfortunately, no evidence exists to
suggest that there is a single set of conditions which leads to
terrorism, nor any evidence to suggest that terrorism will
disappear once those conditions have changed. But even if we accept
the argument, there has been little sign of progress toward
diminishing the underlying conditions that facilitate terrorism, at
least as defined by the U.S. government.

From the perspective of U.S. strategy to date, diminishing the
underlying conditions of terrorism includes both material and
intangible aspects. The Bush administration’s 2003 strategy
for combating terrorism set forth two objectives in this area:
“partner with the international community to strengthen weak states
and prevent the (re)emergence of terrorism … [and] win the war
of ideas.”51 As to the
former, subgoals include resolving regional disputes, fostering
development, and bringing about market-based economies and good
governance so that states can look after their people and control
their borders.

Winning the war of ideas involves assuring Muslims that American
values are congruent with Islam and supporting moderate and modern
Muslim governments. The Bush 2003 strategy document further states
that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is “a critical
component to winning the war of ideas.”52 The Obama administration’s
strategy contains many similar goals while differing in language:
counter the ideology, diminish the drivers of violence, and break
the cycle of state failure.53

Data show that the United States has failed to diminish the
conditions that the government has argued produce
terrorism.54 Afghanistan
and Iraq have become even more corrupt since the United States
began pouring in resources. In Afghanistan and Iraq’s first
year in the Transparency International’s Corruption
Perception Index (2003 and 2005), they occupied the 26th and 15th
percentile, respectively. By 2016, they had plummeted to the fourth
and sixth percentile. The average corruption percentile ranking for
the seven countries in which the U.S. has conducted military
operations has deteriorated by 14 percentage points.55 Additionally, six of the seven
countries remain mired in Freedom House’s worst category
— not free — although political rights and civil
liberties have improved negligibly.56 Finally, in terms of weak and
failed states, the State Fragility Index’s characterization
of Afghanistan and Iraq remains unchanged. Before the War on Terror
began, Afghanistan was in the worst category (extreme fragility)
and Iraq was in the second worst (high), and they remain there
today. Of the other five countries, three have worsened and two
remain unchanged.57

Explaining Failure

The failure of the War on Terror has two fundamental — and
related — sources. The first is the inflated assessment of
the terrorist threat facing the United States, which led to the
decision to commit to an expansive counterterrorism campaign
focused on a series of actions that have very little to do with
protecting Americans from terrorist attacks. The second source of
failure is the adoption of an aggressive strategy of military
intervention, which was largely driven by the failure to define the
terrorism challenge accurately. But it also stems from the
widespread belief among Washington, D.C., elites in the
indispensable nature of American power and the utility of military
force in international politics. Together, these factors have
promoted an American strategy that is both ineffective and
counterproductive.

Error #1: America’s Inflated Assessment of the Terrorist
Threat

The September 11 attacks were devastating, and given
America’s lack of experience with such events, fear,
confusion, and overreaction were understandable responses in the
short run.58 But with
the benefit of hindsight it is clear that the terrorist threat to
the United States is, in fact, much smaller than originally
imagined.59
Unfortunately, rather than correct the initial threat assessment,
political leaders from both parties (and like-minded think tanks)
have continued to portray terrorism as a very large, even
existential, threat to the United States.60

This inflated view of the terrorist threat led directly to the
excessive size, scope and ambition of the War on Terror. Rather
than simply looking to punish al Qaeda for 9/11, the Bush
administration quickly decided that the United States must not only
destroy al Qaeda but all other terrorist groups with global reach
and then eliminate the underlying conditions that gave rise to
them.

Declaring war on terrorism was an exercise in futility.
Terrorism is not a disease that can be eradicated through
vaccination, but a strategy that all kinds of people have chosen to
use for all kinds of reasons in all sorts of places and situations.
History shows that terrorism has been a hallmark of wealthy states
as well as poor ones, of secular as well as religious groups, and
of conservative as well as insurgent and progressive
causes.61 The call to
eliminate terrorism may play well politically, but it will never be
a serious policy proposal no matter how many trillions of dollars
the United States spends on it.

This is not to deny that al Qaeda and the Islamic State pose a
threat to Americans. They do. The question here, however, is
whether the American response to 9/11 and the War on Terror —
in particular the strategy of military intervention — has
been an effective one. By defining the threat in inflated, even
existential, terms, the United States has expanded the War on
Terror far beyond the necessary boundaries, creating new problems
while failing to resolve the original ones, all at a cost that is
far too high.

Error #2: Flawed Counterterrorism Strategy

The American approach to fighting terrorism in the Middle East
suffers from three related flaws.

First, American intervention has aimed at the wrong target.
Political grievances and competition for power in the Middle East,
not a radical Islamist hatred of the West, are the primary sources
of conflict both in the Middle East and between Islamist groups and
the West. Unfortunately, since the beginning of the War on Terror,
too many American officials have believed that the motivation for
al Qaeda and ISIS terrorist attacks against the United States is
primarily an anti-American ideology, hatred of our freedoms, or the
desire to destroy the United States.62

Believing that this hatred of the United States is the “on
button” for terrorism, America’s short-term strategy has
centered on killing those terrorists, while the vision in the
longer-term is a battle for the hearts and minds of the Muslim
world in order to eliminate negative beliefs about the United
States. This long-run strategy involves not only reshaping the
narrative about Islam and the West but also reshaping Middle
Eastern governments in the Western image.

Tragically, this approach has the United States working the
wrong problem entirely. The motivation for al Qaeda, its various
affiliates, and ISIS are local and regional. They seek, along with
many others, to control the political systems of the Middle East.
It is true that both ISIS and al Qaeda have discussed the
importance of striking the “far enemy” (the United States) as a
strategy for recruitment and to weaken the “near enemy” (local Arab
governments). But as Osama bin Laden and other jihadist leaders
have made clear, the United States is implicated in their plans not
because the jihadists hate its freedoms or because the destruction
of the Western way of life is their goal, but because American
foreign policy blocks their path to power in the Middle
East.63

The second flaw in the American strategy is the reliance on
military means. Misled by a misdiagnosis of the underlying problem,
the United States has pursued an interventionist strategy focused
overwhelmingly on destroying terrorist organizations and killing
individual terrorists. Research has shown that this is rarely the
path toward a permanent solution to terrorist groups.64 Over the past 15 years American
efforts have produced short-term effects as jihadists scatter in
the face of drone strikes and American intervention. In the longer
run, however, military force is the wrong tool for the mission. As
the former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley
McChrystal, has famously noted, the United States can’t “kill
its way out” of the war against terror groups such as ISIS and al
Qaeda.65

American intervention has likely made things worse. The
invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, along with the toppling of
Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya and the U.S.-supported war in Yemen,
have created chaos, allowing insurgent and terrorist groups more
room to operate. Drone strikes, targeted killings, and the enduring
American presence in these places have also generated more anger
and resentment toward the United States, boosting jihadist
propaganda and recruiting efforts.66 Nor is the resentment limited to
the jihadists themselves. Public attitudes in many Muslim-majority
countries toward the United States cratered in the wake of the 2003
invasion of Iraq and have remained dismal since then.67

In the absence of continued U.S. intervention, al Qaeda and ISIS
would likely have had less motivation to carry out such attacks
— at least in the United States. Faisal Shahzad, who
attempted to set off a bomb in New York’s Times Square in
2010, illustrates the dynamic. In court, Shahzad explained his
actions, “I want to plead guilty 100 times because unless the
United States pulls out of Afghanistan and Iraq, until they stop
drone strikes in Somalia, Pakistan and Yemen and stop attacking
Muslim lands, we will attack the United States and be out to get
them.”68 Shahzad’s
words echo the repeated statements of terror leaders such as Osama
bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.69 In various strategy documents they
highlight the centrality of America (and Israel) to their
recruiting success.

The U.S. government seems to understand this, at least in
theory. As early as 2004, a Defense Science Board report noted that
“American actions and the flow of events have elevated the
authority of the Jihadi insurgents and tended to ratify their
legitimacy among Muslims, identifying both U.S. support of Israel
and the American occupation of Iraq as examples.”70 A 2006 National Intelligence
Estimate concluded “the American invasion and occupation of Iraq .
. . helped spawn a new generation of Islamic
radicalism.”71 A 2011
study of terrorist plots against the United States between 2001 and
2010 by the Los Angeles division of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) found the same: “Two central themes galvanized
actors: anti-U.S. sentiment based on a perception that the United
States was at war with Islam, and the belief that violent jihad was
the righteous, and in fact, requisite response.”72 And finally, a 2012 study by the
FBI concluded that the number-one motivation for homegrown
terrorist attacks in the United States was radicalization caused by
anger at American military intervention against Middle Eastern
nations.73

Finally, American leaders also fell prey to the conceit that
they could reshape the politics of other nations. Both the Bush and
Obama administrations believed that terrorism emerges, in part or
whole, from factors such as poverty, deprivation, and an inability
to engage in the political process. Although academic research
reveals these assumptions to be flawed, the notion that the United
States will not be safe from terrorism until the Middle East is
stable, prosperous, and democratic has been a motivating principle
behind America’s longer-term strategy of regime change and
nation building.74

Although it might benefit the United States if Middle Eastern
countries evolved into Western-style democracies, there is no
evidence that the United States itself can play a determining role
in making it happen, especially via military intervention. The
results to date from Afghanistan and Iraq suggest that not even
massive American intervention is enough to ensure permanent,
positive change.75

The real question is why anyone in the United States believes
that it would be possible for Americans to reshape Middle Eastern
governments and societies. The U.S. track record of military
intervention in civil conflicts is long and tragic. Well before
Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States imagined it could impose
political solutions on the Philippines, Vietnam, and the Dominican
Republic, just to name a few failures. Nor does military victory
improve the odds. The results of efforts to impose democracy via
military means are dismal.76 Postwar nation building,
especially by outside powers mistrusted (or actively opposed) by
local populations, likewise has a poor track record.77

The notion that the United States could topple Saddam Hussein,
for example, and then impose a new political system and an
effective (and nonsectarian) new military force was a dangerous
fantasy. The United States often fails to achieve desired outcomes
in its own domestic matters. It is difficult to see why U.S.
officials have imagined they would succeed in achieving sweeping
outcomes in another nation’s political system.

Stepping Back from the War on Terror

How should these lessons from the failure of the War on Terror
inform President Trump’s strategy for confronting ISIS and
Islamist-inspired terrorism moving forward?

The United States confronts three basic strategic options for
dealing with ISIS, al Qaeda, and future variants of jihadist
terrorism. First, the United States can maintain the current
course. The goal of such a strategy would be to contain and
eventually defeat (or simply outlast) ISIS and other groups by
continuing to rely heavily on local partners and without
introducing much, if any, additional American firepower into the
conflict.

Those who favor the “steady on” approach tend to view terrorism
as a moderate-sized threat and believe that the current strategy is
slowly but steadily making progress against ISIS. This group
generally agrees that major American intervention was
counterproductive and believes local forces are the best suited to
fight ISIS, but sees an important supporting role for the United
States.78 Until
Trump’s election, the weight of establishment opinion on both
the right and left appeared to be roughly in line with the strategy
followed by the Obama administration, with debate occurring over
relatively minor adjustments to the strategy such as humanitarian
corridors or no-fly zones.

Second, the United States could choose to step up the fight. The
goal of this strategy would be to increase — significantly
— the American commitment to the maintenance of security and
stability in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and perhaps even Libya and
Yemen. By bringing enough firepower and pressure to bear,
supporters argue, the United States could destroy the
Islamist-inspired terrorism threat, encourage the development of
peaceful political systems, and prevent the reemergence of
terrorism.

Despite widespread support for the status quo there is also a
substantial minority that favors stepping up the fight against
ISIS.79 While the
president’s rhetoric suggests little interest in nation
building abroad, both his campaign promises and operating style
indicate expanded military efforts in the War on Terror are likely.
Those who prefer this option believe that the terrorism threat is
large enough to justify a great deal more effort than the United
States is currently making. Former National Security Adviser
General Michael Flynn, for example, has written that the fight
against terrorism is a world war.80 Like Flynn, most supporters for
stepping up the fight believe that the current strategy is
ineffective.

The reasons given for the failure so far vary, but many believe
that the central problem has been the unwillingness of the United
States to commit enough military and political capital. The answer,
from this view, is that the United States should do much more in
the Middle East and surrounding region, including both bringing
additional military pressure to bear and continuing the
nation-building efforts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere.
Members of a bipartisan group, including retired Generals
McChrystal and Petraeus, for example, recently called on the United
States to make a “generational commitment” to Afghanistan and to
invest substantially more in order to ensure security and stability
there.81

Our analysis, however, clearly illustrates that the United
States should rule out both the step-up option and the steady-on
option. Neither ISIS nor the broader problem of Islamist-inspired
terrorism represents enough of a threat to justify an expansive,
aggressive, and costly series of overseas campaigns. Even under
Obama, the “light footprint” approach continued to put thousands of
Americans at risk carrying out nation building and terrorist
killing missions that produce more problems than they solve, all at
enormous financial cost.

Instead, the United States should take a step back from the
fight. Though we do not attempt here to consider all of the
potential strategies or tactics, we argue that the right general
direction for the United States is to reduce the level of military
intervention, suspend efforts at nation building, and end direct
efforts to dictate political outcomes in the Middle East. This
approach would seek to reduce the incentive for anti-American
terrorism by disengaging from what are primarily civil wars in the
Middle East.

Although the eventual details will depend on many factors, the
Trump administration should embrace four main recommendations as it
rethinks U.S. strategy:

1. Redefine the Objectives of the Fight against Terrorism to
Align with the Limited Nature of the Threat

In recognition that terrorism is a far more limited threat than
U.S. officials have generally acknowledged, the first thing
policymakers should do is right-size the goals of American
counterterrorism strategy. Specifically, the United States must
abandon the goal of destroying al Qaeda, its various affiliates,
and ISIS, and the fantasy of eradicating the causes of terrorism.
In addition, the United States should scale back its efforts to
deny sanctuary to terrorist organizations, which have proven
similarly hapless. The United States cannot rid the world of all
terrorist organizations, eliminate the conditions that give rise to
terrorism, nor can it prevent small groups from finding safe
havens. As the past 15 years have made clear, the United States
does not need to do any of these things to maintain a high level of
security. Homeland security efforts may or may not have been
necessary to prevent many attacks at home, but unlike foreign
intervention, they did not make things worse.

Instead of seeking victory in a War on Terror, the United States
should work to manage the threat of terrorism, narrowing its
counterterrorism strategy to focus primarily on the defense of the
homeland. Intelligence services should continue to monitor global
networks to track possible threats from terrorist organizations
abroad but, since 2001, those threats have come overwhelmingly in
the form of individuals who already live in the United States and
are not members of al Qaeda or ISIS. In contrast to fighting a war
on terrorism, the strategic management of terrorist threats
requires recognizing that some amount of anti-American terrorism is
inevitable. Although this is unpleasant to acknowledge, it is a
necessary starting point for an effective strategy.

2. End Direct Military Intervention and Nation Building in the
Greater Middle East

The narrower goal of homeland defense does not require the
United States to pursue the complete destruction of foreign
terrorist organizations, the assassination of individual terrorist
leaders, or the prevention of negative political and military
outcomes in the Middle East or North Africa. Thus, the United
States should withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria,
and other nations. It should also end the drone campaigns carried
out as part of the War on Terror throughout the region. Although
there may be situations in the future that warrant direct military
intervention against a terrorist organization, military strikes
should not be a regular part of U.S. counterterrorism strategy.

Likewise, the United States should cease coercive efforts to
promote democracy and nation build in the Middle East. The military
intervention and subsequent occupation and intrusive political
pressure required for such efforts have created chaos and
resentment and fueled additional terrorism, as events in
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen attest. And despite 15
years and an enormous investment of money and lives, U.S. efforts
in Afghanistan and Iraq have produced little progress toward
long-term peace and stability. There is little evidence that
another 15 years will produce anything different.

Advocates of intervention on both the left and the right will
complain that such a withdrawal carries too much risk. It is
certainly true that an American withdrawal will put added pressure
on local actors to confront jihadist organizations. In the short
run, especially, this may allow ISIS and various al Qaeda
franchises the ability to function more freely. In the case of
Afghanistan, it may even pave the way for the Taliban to retake
nominal control of the country if the current government cannot
secure its own territory.

These objections ring hollow, however, in light of the American
experience since 9/11. A decade and a half’s worth of
evidence shows that the interventionist camp’s confidence in
the effectiveness of military intervention is misplaced. Fifteen
years of significant efforts have failed to stabilize the region or
diminish the jihadist enterprise. Instead, the visible and
militarized presence of the United States has helped feed the
growth of terrorism and anti-American sentiment throughout the
Middle East. Pulling U.S. troops out of the region, ending drone
strikes, and withdrawing from the direct fight against ISIS will
not only reduce casualties that stem from the military campaign,
but may further reduce the likelihood of future terrorist attacks
against the United States.

3. Support Regional Partners to Take the Lead in Confronting
Terrorism through Indirect and Multilateral Channels

Terrorism is not a big enough threat to warrant direct American
military intervention. The United States should make it clear to
its Middle Eastern partners that, although the United States
opposes ISIS and supports the development of open societies in the
Middle East, the tasks of dealing with terrorism and governance are
regional responsibilities.

What support the United States does provide, however, should be
indirect and, whenever possible, should be provided through the
United Nations or other multilateral institutions in order to
defuse the “West versus Islam” narrative that the War on Terror has
unfortunately reinforced. The fewer obvious signs of Western
presence in the Middle East there are, the clearer it will be that
the clash is not between the West and Islam, but between factions
fighting for control of the Middle East.82

4. Return to an Emphasis on the Intelligence and Law
Enforcement Paradigm for Dealing with Terrorism

Fighting wars is a job for the Pentagon and the military
services. Fighting terrorism, on the other hand, has historically
been a job for the intelligence services and law enforcement
agencies.83 American
military operations in the Middle East have done little to reduce
the incidence of Islamist-inspired lone-wolf terrorism here in the
United States and have likely led to a higher incidence of such
attacks. Instead, the United States should focus on the difficult
work of assessing emerging threats and interrupting them in the
planning cycle through intelligence and police work, not military
intervention.

Conclusion

America has a successful track record regarding homeland
security. Although critics have rightly pointed out gaps and
inefficiencies, there have been very few successful terrorist
attacks in the United States since 2001. Even fewer attacks have
caused casualties and, in all cases, the perpetrators have been
killed or arrested in short order. Homeland security can never
promise perfect security, and acknowledging this is difficult,
especially politically. But it is clear that adopting aggressive
military strategies that falsely promise zero risk have failed. It
is time to turn the page in the War on Terror.

By adopting a more modest goal of managing the terror risk, the
United States can reduce the likelihood of future attacks through
continued homeland security efforts that rely on law enforcement
and intelligence agencies. By embracing a less militaristic and
less interventionist approach, the United States can avoid
repeating the dangerous and very costly mistakes of the past 15
years.

Appendix 1. Regression Analysis

To investigate the impact of U.S. military intervention we
created regression models to examine the significance, if any, of
U.S. military actions in the War on Terror while controlling for
other variables often used in the study of terrorism, such as a
state’s GDP per capita, economic growth rate, social
fractionalization, polity, and education levels. The discussion
below provides additional detail on two statistical analyses of the
relationship between United States intervention and levels of
terrorism around the world.

In the Core Model of our first analysis (see Figure A1), the
dependent variable is the number of terror attacks worldwide. The
explanatory variables are the money spent by the U.S. government
each year in the War on Terror (in billions of dollars) and the
number of U.S. troops deployed to fight the War on Terror each year
(in thousands). Money spent was lagged by one year to compare the
money spent in time period t with the number of terror
attacks in time period t + 1. For Model 2, money spent was
lagged by two years. In Model 3, neither variable was lagged. Money
spent was lagged in the core and second model because spending
money is estimated to have a delayed impact. By lagging the
variable, the model was able to take into account the time needed
for money to work its way through the system and produce an effect.
Boots on the ground were thought to have a more immediate impact,
so that variable was not lagged.

Figure A1: U.S. War on Terror and Level of Terror
AttacksNotes: Dependent variable: number of
global terror attacks

In all three runs (i.e., Core, Model 2, and Model 3),
both variables were statistically significant following common
practice in political science and public policy research.
Statistical significance refers to the likelihood that a
relationship exists between an independent variable and the
dependent variable. In this case, the model is estimating the
relationship between U.S. efforts (boots on the ground and money
spent) and the number of terror attacks worldwide (i.e., the
dependent variable). The asterisks above indicate a reader can be
95 or 99 percent confident that each variable is related to the
number of terror attacks worldwide. Conversely, that means there is
a 1 or 5 percent chance that there is actually no relationship
between the respective independent variables and the dependent
variable.

The results indicate that the core model explains 68
percent of the variation in the number of worldwide terror attacks,
Model 2 explains 80 percent, and Model 3 explains 39 percent. In
the aggregate, spending more money and sending more military
personnel has been associated with an increase in the number of
terror attacks.

In order to control for other factors that scholars
believe may be related to terrorism, our second analysis involved
an expanded set of variables (see Figure A2). The explanatory
variables are listed in the first column. The dependent variable is
the number of terror attacks worldwide for the core and second
model. For the final model, “Number of Islamist FTOs,” the
dependent variable is the number of Islamist foreign terrorist
organizations as identified by the Department of
State.

To achieve the core model, the model was run with all 12
variables, the most insignificant variable was deleted, and then
the model was run again. This process was repeated until all
remaining independent variables were statistically significant.
Unexpectedly, the results indicate that regime type and education
are positively related to the number of terror attacks, all else
being equal. This suggests that, as either the population receives
more education or the country transitions away from autocracy, the
number of terror attacks will increase. Additionally, the results
indicate that if the United States invaded a country or conducted
drone/air strikes in a country, the number of terror attacks
dramatically increased in those countries. Being invaded by the
United States is associated with an increase of 143 terror attacks
per year, while having drone/air strikes carried out by the United
States in your country is associated with an increase of 395 terror
attacks per year. The results indicate that the six variables in
the core model explain 43 percent of the variation in the number of
terror attacks. It is important to note that the political/civil
rights variable is scored by Freedom House such that an increasing
score is a sign of worsening political/civil rights. Therefore, the
positive relationship observed in the model between political/civil
rights and terrorism suggests that worsening rights are associated
with an increase in terrorism (as would be expected).

The second model reflects all 12 variables. The results
are largely similar to the core model. The results indicate that
the 12 variables in the model explain 53 percent of the variation
in the number of terror attacks.

In the final model, the dependent variable was changed.
Instead of examining the number of terror attacks worldwide, the
dependent variable is now the number of Islamist-inspired foreign
terrorist organizations as identified by the U.S. Department of
State. Eleven of the 12 independent variables are included. Of
note, the number of years in the War on Terror is
related

to an increase in the number of Islamist-inspired foreign
terrorist organization. Additionally, education and polity continue
to be significant and in the unexpected direction. The results
suggest that, as either of those two areas improves, the number of
Islamist-inspired terror groups increases, too. The results
indicate that the 11 variables in the model explain 65 percent of
the variation in the number of Islamist-inspired FTOs over
time.

Notes

The authors thank Captain Maxwell Pappas, U.S. Army, for his
valuable research and insights as the project took shape.

John Mueller and Mark Stewart,
“Responsible Counterterrorism Policy,” Cato Institute Policy
Analysis no. 755, September 10, 2014. Also see Tammy O. Tengs et
al., “Five-Hundred Life-Saving Interventions and Their
Cost-Effectiveness,” Risk Analysis 15, no. 3 (1995):
369-90. The authors studied 587 life-saving interventions in the
United States and found that the median cost of saving a life was
roughly $3.4 million, or about the cost of two Tomahawk cruise
missiles. From a more global perspective, a mere $2 billion of the
annual War on Terror funding could save the lives of all 600,000
people who die from Malaria each year. See Chris Weller, “The
World’s Best Charity Can Save a Life for $3,337.06,”
Business Insider, July 29, 2015, http://www.businessinsider.com/the-worlds-best-charity-can-save-a-life-for-333706-and-thats-a-steal-2015-7/.

Others making some form of this
argument include Barry Posen, Restraint: A New Foundation for
U.S. Grand Strategy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
2015); Andrew Bacewich, America’s War for the Greater
Middle East: A Military History (New York: Random House,
2016); Graham T. Allison, “Deterring ISIS,” The National
Interest, September/October 2016, pp. 5-10; and Michael
Mandelbaum, Mission Failure: America and the World in the
Post-Cold War Era (New York: Oxford University Press,
2016).

Although domestic policies and
legislation such as the Patriot Act and the creation of the
Department of Homeland Security have certainly played a significant
role in the response to terrorism, we focus here on the critical
lessons for the fight against Islamist-inspired terrorism that stem
from what the United States has done outside the homeland. Our
analysis therefore focuses on those efforts and leaves the
assessment of domestic counterterrorism policies to others. See,
for example, John Mueller and Mark G. Stewart, Terror,
Security, and Money: Balancing the Benefits, Risks, and Costs of
Homeland Security (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011);
and John Mueller and Mark G. Stewart, Chasing Ghosts: The
Policing of Terrorism (New York: Oxford University Press,
2016).

David Inserra, “Attack at Ohio
State Brings U.S. Terror Plots, Attacks to 93 Since 9/11,”
Daily Signal, Heritage Foundation, November 30, 2016,
http://www.dailysignal.com/2016/11/30/attack-at-ohio-state-brings-us-terror-plots-attacks-to-93-since-911/.
Many observers have argued even the 93 attempts is an inflated
measure of the threat. See, for example, Mueller,
Overblown; and Trevor Aaronson, The Terror Factory:
Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism (New
York: Ig Publishing, 2013).

George Tenet and Bill Harlow,
At the Center of the Storm (New York: Harper Perennial,
2007).

Mueller and Stewart, Chasing
Ghosts, p. 107.

Ibid., p. 108.

Global Terrorism Database, dataset
June 2015.

Ibid.

The largest of these was the Camp
Speicher massacre in Tikrit, Iraq, in June 2014, during which the
Islamic State executed as many as 1,700 Shia Iraqi Air Force
cadets. On the massacre see Omar Al-Jawoshy and Tim Arango, “Iraq
Executes Dozens for 2014 Massacre by ISIS,” New York
Times, August 21, 2016. Terrorism data are from the Global
Terrorism Database, https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd.

A comprehensive assessment of the
worsening of these conditions can be found in Anthony Cordesman,
“Defeating ISIS: The Real Threats and Challenges,” Center for
Strategic and International Studies, August 4, 2016.

Of the seven countries, only
Pakistan has moved from the worst category up to “partly free.”
However, the average score for the seven countries improved from
6.6 to 6.1 (6 = “very restricted”; the scale is from 1 to 7 with a
one representing most free). See Freedom House, “Freedom in the
World, 2016,” https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2016.

Mary Habeck et al., “A Global
Strategy for Combating al Qaeda and the Islamic State,” American
Enterprise Institute, December 2015. By way of illustration, this
report begins with the following sentence: “The United States faces
a fundamental challenge to its way of life.”

Useful summaries of terrorism that
provide an informed historical perspective include: Bruce Hoffman,
Inside Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press,
2006); and David Rapoport, “The Fourth Wave: September 11 in the
History of Terrorism,” Current History 100 (2001):
419-24.

George W. Bush, “Address to Joint
Session of Congress,” September 20, 2001, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/attacked/transcripts/bushaddress_092001.html.
More recently, see Michael Flynn and Michael Ledeen, The Field
of Fight (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2016).
Ironically, perhaps, the National 9/11 Commission Report debunks
this assessment of al Qaeda’s aims. See National 9/11
Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United
States (Washington: Government Printing Office, 2011):
47-54.

The idea that poverty or failed
states are the only incubators of terrorism is refuted by the
history of terrorism. Europe, hardly a collection of failed states,
witnessed a great deal of terrorism during the 20th century. And
the 9/11 attackers, it is worth remembering, were professionals
with college degrees. More broadly, research shows that there is no
single pathway to terrorism. See, for example, Faiza Patel,
“Rethinking Radicalization,” Brennan Center (2011); Alberto Abadie,
“Poverty, Political Freedom, and the Roots of Terrorism,”
American Economic Review 96, no. 2 (May 2006): 50-56; Tim
Krieger and Daniel Meierrieks, “What Causes Terrorism,” Public
Choice 147, nos. 1-2 (April 2011): 3-27; and James Piazza, “Do
Democracy and Free Markets Protect Us from Terrorism?”
International Politics 45, no. 1 (January 2008):
72-91.

On this point it is important to
note that the U.S. investment, as large as it has been,
doesn’t even represent the entirety of the nation-building
projects in the Middle East. America’s NATO allies and other
coalition partners have themselves provided thousands of military
personnel since 2001 and spent many billions of dollars on top of
what the U.S. has spent. See, for example, White House Fact Sheet,
“NATO’s Enduring Commitment to Afghanistan,” July 9, 2016,
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/07/09/fact-sheet-natos-enduring-commitment-afghanistan.

Support for encouraging regional
partners to play a much stronger role is widespread. See, for
example, Albright and Hadley, “Middle East Strategy Task Force:
Final Report of the Co-Chairs”; Flournoy and Fontaine, “An
Intensified Approach to Combatting the Islamic State”; and Habeck,
et al., “A Global Strategy for Combating al Qaeda and the Islamic
State.”

Paul R. Pillar and Christopher A.
Preble, “Don’t You Know There’s a War On? Assessing the
Military’s Role in Counterterrorism,” in Benjamin H.
Friedman, Jim Harper, and Christopher A. Preble, eds.,
Terrorizing Ourselves: Why U.S. Counterterrorism Policy is
Failing and How to Fix It (Washington: Cato Institute,
2010).

A. Trevor Thrall is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and an associate professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. Erik Goepner commanded military units in Iraq and Afghanistan and is a doctoral candidate in public policy at George Mason University. He will be a pre-doctoral visiting research fellow at the Cato Institute during the 2017–18 academic year.